The present invention generally relates to 2D (two dimensional) or 3D (three dimensional) virtual worlds. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for centrally managing an authentication process and teleporting virtual properties from a virtual world to another virtual world. The present invention is also relates to a system or method for centrally managing credential information and virtual properties across a plurality of virtual worlds.
As virtual worlds (e.g., SecondLife™, Active Worlds™) become more and more popular in recent years, there are trends that different virtual worlds can interoperate. Interoperability is a property referring to an ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together. Interoperability can further mean an ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged. A further trend is an ability to teleport virtual properties between different virtual worlds freely. These virtual worlds may be hosted by the same or different vendors, and scenes (e.g., virtual scenes) and the underlying engine (e.g., software implementing the virtual worlds) may be homogeneous or heterogeneous. Thus, providing a user with a same appearance and a same identity in different virtual worlds (even the current 2D web) is highly demanded. The same appearance refers to an avatar having same size, same color, same shape and same name across different virtual worlds. The same identity refers to a same login ID, same password and same username across different virtual worlds.
Currently, different virtual worlds use different formats of user identifiers (e.g., login ID, username, password, etc.) to login. For example, SecondLife™ requires first name/last name pairs to sign in, while in Active Worlds™ there may be a length limitation on usernames. Thus, users have to remember all these kinds of usernames/passwords (e.g., users have to remember each login ID/password for each virtual world) to access and/or play in different kinds of virtual worlds. A lack of a universal username/password that can be accepted in all the virtual worlds provides hardships to users when they want to teleport their virtual properties between different virtual worlds. The lack of a universal username/password prevents a user from being appeared in a unified identity or appearance in the different virtual worlds.
Therefore, it is highly desirable to provide a system or method for centrally managing credential information (e.g., login ID, password, username, email address, etc.) of users across all the virtual worlds and for enabling a user to teleport virtual properties of him/her from a virtual world to another virtual world.